What right had he to insist that her brother-in-law cared for
her with more than the affection authorised by affinity? He had no right.
She hated him for his insolent letter. She scorned the protection of his
love. She had her refuge and her shelter in a holier love than his. The
doors of the old home would open to her at a word.
She sat on a low stool in front of the hearth, while the pile of ship
timber on the andirons burnt itself out and turned from red to grey. She
sat looking into the dying fire and recalling the pictures of the past;
the dull grey convent rooms and formal convent garden; the petty rules and
restrictions; the so-frequent functions--low mass and high, benedictions,
vespers--the recurrent sound of the chapel bell. The few dull books,
permitted in the hour of so-called recreation; the sombre grey gown,
which was the only relief from perpetual black; the limitations of
that colourless life. She had been happy with the Ursulines under her
kinswoman's gentle sway. But could she be happy with the present Superior,
whose domineering temper she knew? She had been happy in her ignorance of
the outer world; but could she be happy again in that grey seclusion--she
who had sat at the banquet of life, who had seen the beauty and the variety
of her native land? To be an exile for the rest of her days, in the
hopeless gloom of a Flemish convent, among the heavy faces of Flemish nuns!
In the intensity of introspective thought she had forgotten one who had
forbidden that gloomy seclusion, and to whom it would be as natural for
her to look for protection and refuge as to convent or husband.
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